NOT QUITE DANCE OR THEATRE - CALL IT ARS GRATIA BINOCHE

By Patricia Boccadoro

PARIS, 9 DECEMBER 2008 - After the success of
Zero Degrees
with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, followed by a
collaboration with Sylvie Guillem resulting in the sublime
Sacred
Monsters - a production that touched perfection - Akram
Khan chatted to me over a year ago of his projected creation
with actress Juliette Binoche, a work which would complete his
trilogy of pas de deux with French artists of
differing milieus.

But the moment the French star moves, the magic is broken, for
the award-winning actress - so photogenic in films -
is no dancer.

Over lunch in Montmartre he spoke with enthusiasm of his
meeting with Binoche when she came to see Zero Degrees
in London. It so happened that Akram's manager's wife, Su-Man
Hsu, who had been a dancer with Rosas Company, was the actress'
masseuse and a suggestion arose that the two of them could
perhaps work together.

"Before I knew what was happening," Khan told me, "the pair of
us were in a studio playing around with projects, and my
curiosity arose as ideas began to flow. I remember saying,
'well, what shall we do?' And she echoed me." "What shall we
do?" said Binoche. "Let's start with nothing."

It seemed like the start of a fresh, inventive journey for the
gifted British choreographer, but 12 months later,
in-i - premiered at the National Theatre in London in
September and presented at the Theatre de la Ville in November
- proved to be just the contrary.

in-i is less a collaboration with Khan than a
continuation of Juliette Binoche's work on the screen. It is a
love story, albeit clichéd, of a couple who fall in love but
after the initial attraction wears off, disillusionment sets in
with the routine of daily life. Frustration, cruelty and
violence take over from the initial playfulness. It is a work
for movie lovers rather than for those who love dance,
qualifying neither as dance nor even theatre, but rather as a
performance. And as far as dialogues go, Khan's had some
interest while those of Binoche, well, we'd heard them before.
Each wrote their own.

The beginning is promising, showing Binoche as a young girl who
is infatuated with the back of a man's head in a cinema. She is
obsessed with this magnetic stranger and is determined to get
to know him. The décor is superb. Anish Kapoor has
devised a large, luminous wall, red at the beginning, which
glows, moves, and changes tones as the story unfolds. The image
is also projected onto the forefront of the stage.

But the moment the French star moves, the magic is broken, for
the award-winning actress - so photogenic in films -
is no dancer. In contrast to Khan, her body - so fragile on
screen and slender off-stage - seems dumpy and her movements
ungainly.

Her energy and force, commendable qualities in themselves,
particularly with a man ten years her junior, cannot match the
grace, intelligence and innate beauty of Khan, and the
partnership never takes off. For those who came to see dance,
Khan gives several formidable displays of the conflict within
him, of love and trust lost, with quicksilver movements, his
arms whipping air faster than the eye can follow. He is
impressive and his aggressiveness is frightening as he hurls
himself repeatedly against the wall, leaving angry traces of
sweat behind.

And then, in one heart-stopping moment, his hands drifted over
and above hers, their fingers touching, his hand circling hers,
but as soon as emotion took off in movement, it was choked back
to earth. And again, when Binoche is pinned up in space,
hanging against a wall, and when dance could have expressed so
much more than words ever could, a lengthy monologue sent the
audience to sleep.

After seeing the performance, I asked Juliette Binoche what it
was like to work with Akram Khan. "It was all very
complicated," she told me. "It's difficult to talk about, and
would take a very long time to explain."

It was a surprising answer, considering the directness with
which Sylvie
Guillem, probably the greatest ballerina of the century and
a woman reputed to have not the easiest of temperaments,
had replied. For
the great ballerina, working with Khan had been amongst the
most enjoyable and fulfilling moments of her career. It had
obviously not been the same for Binoche.

However, such a creation should be put into context.
in-i in France forms part of a "Binoche fortnight"
which also includes an exhibition of thirty of her paintings
and a retrospective of her films at the Cinemathéque of Paris.
It is a performance which uses dance, allows the actress to
sing, (yes, she sings a version of Gershwin's, "The Man I
Love"), and to experiment with the idea of movement to express
her emotions - emotions which, unfortunately, were neither
shared with Khan nor with the audience.

Patricia Boccadoro writes on dance in Europe. She has
contributed to The Guardian, The Observer and Dancing Times and
was dance consultant to the BBC Omnibus documentary on Rudolf
Nureyev. Ms. Boccadoro is the dance editor for
Culturekiosque.com